


Genetrix

by MilayaMilenZeal



Series: Long Live the Queen [26]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Adoption Talk, Dreams, Family talk, Food for Thought, Gen, Post-Game(s), Theorizing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 02:51:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10822215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilayaMilenZeal/pseuds/MilayaMilenZeal
Summary: M.E. 784Raising a child alone was never easy, and this is something Prompto knows very well… and he’s also come to realize that parenthood brings so many difficult questions and subjects to the table that he’d rather not talk about… but he does it anyway for his little girl.





	1. Genetrix 1.0

Prompto’s not sure what it is that wakes him that night, but whatever it is, he’s wide awake before he’s even fully aware of it. The darkness doesn’t really bother him as much as it would’ve so long ago, a side effect from those ten long years of night, and this also ensures he picks up on the source of whatever had woken him.

Someone was downstairs…

He frowns as he climbs out of the bed, taking his gun from under the pillow and then, slowly, he leaves the room and heads downstairs. His breathing’s even, but at the same time his heart’s almost in his throat as he wonders who could be trying to get anything from their house, because they basically live in the middle of nowhere, so who would bother?

But when he comes downstairs and looks into the living room… he manages to relax and breathes quietly as he holsters his gun.

“What are you doing up, princess?” he asks, and the 17-year-old almost jumps in alarm at the sudden entry, before she calms.

“…couldn’t sleep,” she admits half-heartedly with a shrug as she settles a bit better on the couch, throw blanket over her lap and a familiar album resting on her knees.

Prompto allows a small smile as he walks over and then settles next to her, placing his arm along her shoulders and tugging her close. She doesn’t object and rests her head against his shoulder. They don’t say anything else for a long time; they just remain where they are in comfortable silence.

“…I had _that_ dream again…”

“…ah.”

Prompto doesn’t need any further information, because he already knows exactly what she means.

A dream she’s had many times before since she was 6 years old; a dream where she’s held safe in what she’s always believed to be the arms of a woman, firmly but gently, a gentle humming in the background as she’s rocked softly. A person she’s always assumed to be her birth mother…

The first time she had that dream, Regina came to his bed in the middle of the night, rather than he coming to her, and she had asked him timidly if she could stay with him for the night. He hadn’t questioned it, and didn’t bring it up until the morning came. But when she had explained it, it had been followed by an innocent question that Prompto hadn’t been sure he’d been ready for just yet;

“ _…Daddy…? Did Mommy leave me…?_ ”

Having to explain to a little six-year-old with a limited vocabulary that she was… well, adopted and that he didn’t know where her mother (or even her real father) was, was quite possibly the hardest conversation he’d ever had with anyone, bar when he had to reveal the truth about his origins to his friends.

And to this day, he’s still shocked that his daughter took it all as well as she had back then. She hadn’t cried about it, hadn’t demanded to know why… she just took it all in and then said, after almost an age of silence: “Oh…”

To be fair, his little girl had always been perceptive. She’d probably caught on very early on that she wasn’t Prompto’s biological child; she didn’t have any of his freckles, his blonde hair, or even the color of his eyes because they were just barely a few shades off. She looked nothing like him, and she saw this so quickly and just… accepted it. Never questioned it, never showed any interest in her biological parents… and never stopped calling him “Dad”.

Of course that didn’t mean the dreams would just stop…

“…I don’t think she was my mother…”

Prompto almost jumps at the sudden proclamation, as quiet as it had been, but Regina isn’t looking up from the album. It takes a moment before he’s able to say anything in response.

“Why do you think that, sweetie?”

“…I just… I… I don’t know…” Regina admits honestly, as she fiddles with the corner of the page. “But… she doesn’t… I… well she…” She pauses with a frustrated groan, tossing her head back onto her father’s arm, before speaking, her eyes shut lightly. “While I felt… safe with her… I’m not sure if it was because she was my mother or… well, whoever took care of me before abandoning me….”

“Hey now, sweetheart,” Prompto points out, gently shaking her by the shoulder. “Listen; I don’t know why your mother was never there for you, but I’m pretty sure that she had a very good reason for it. And if there’d been any other choice, she probably would’ve loved to take care of you.”

“Then why did she _leave_ me?!” Regina counters immediately. “Why wasn’t I worth the hassle and… and why did she leave me by the Crown City? What, was I like… daemon fodder or something?”

“Princess, just stop…” Prompto groans as he adjusts his position and pulls her up against him. She hesitates for a second, before hugging back. He rubs her back with both hands, as he speaks to her as soothingly as he can. “We don’t _know_ why you were left there… but there are other possibilities besides your mother not feeling up to it or… simply tossing you to the daemons.”

“…like what?” she grumbles half-heartedly. She probably doesn’t want to admit to it. Because when she does, that’s probably when she’ll start to second-guess everything… but she’s almost an adult now. She should be ready to take the implications… the _possibilities_.

“She could’ve been _running_ from daemons, and perhaps she was running out of stamina and thought ‘I’m not letting my baby die, so let me hide her here and then draw attention to myself to keep her safe’.”

She flinches, obviously not liking the scenario, but to Prompto, it was one of the few options that made sense. Especially since no one’s come to claim Regina to be their child over the years. He wanted to believe that that was the case, rather than any of the other options, even if it meant Regina’s biological parents were likely dead… probably had been for years.

“Maybe she was there with you… but the rubble had collapsed on top of her, crushing her. And maybe that was why you were crying as you were when I found you… maybe you knew… maybe you already knew… I don’t know… maybe.”

“Dad, you’re _not_ helping me feel better…” she grumbles softly.

“I know, hon,” he admits. “But you need to consider that there’s more than one possibility to what happened. Until we know for sure… we can’t make any assumptions about your origins.”

She snorts, unhappily, but he feels her smiling lightly against his shoulder. “Yeah, right… next option you’re gonna say I was kidnapped from my parents and just… left somewhere to be found by someone else.”

Prompto hums softly… and then his mouth opens before he can stop himself to say something he _never_ intended to say… _ever_.

“Well, it’s certainly possible… happened to me, anyway.”

“Yeah, ye—…wait, say what?”

He almost groans when she pulls back to look at him and he realizes far too late what he just said, but, the more he thinks on it, the more he realizes that, yes, his daughter has the _right_ to know… she’s _always_ had the right…

“Yeah… you and me, sweetie? We’re more alike than you may’ve thought initially,” he admits, pulling her back against him, because he can’t bring himself to look her in the eyes just yet. “Someone, I don’t know who exactly—might’ve been the people who raised me, might’ve been someone else, hell if I know…—but they took me away from my parents, and brought me into the Crown City. There, I was formally adopted into the Argentum family and… well.” He chuckles mirthlessly. “I dunno what happened to my mother, to be fair… but my father…” At this point, he pauses and shuts his eyes, bracing himself for saying what needed to be said… though he wasn’t going to give her the whole truth. That wasn’t important… not anymore. “My father… died before I could properly meet him, or even talk to him.”

She doesn’t respond to the words, but she seems to understand he needs the support maybe more than she does, and so she quietly snuggles closer to him. He smiles softly and wraps his arms firmly around her, as she breathes softly against his neck. He doesn’t mind… not at all.

“…so…” she suddenly murmurs, and her breath actually tickles as she talks. “…guess that means you can’t say whether me feeling as I do about the lady… whether that’s because she might be my mom… huh?”

Prompto chuckles softly. “Well… maybe not entirely… I _do_ know that most mothers would  definitely come looking for their children. Heck, back in the day, we came across a Naga that was demanding where her baby was, so—”

“Wait… a _daemon_ demanding its baby back?!” Regina exclaims as she swiftly pulls back to look at him. “How did that work?”

Prompto blinks, before he shrugs softly. He hadn’t actually thought about that in a long time, but he really failed to see the importance in it. “Like I said; she demanded to know where her baby was. She actually seemed to believe we’d taken it from her.”

“How do you even… wait… are you saying it… it _talked?!_ ”

“…Yes, she did,” Prompto says calmly, not really understanding what his little girl was getting at.

“…but… I thought… I thought daemons _couldn’t_ talk…” she got out.

“Well, not usually, really…”

As Prompto said that, though, the realization of where she was going with this began to actually hit him, slowly at first, before it almost smashed him in the face with a sledgehammer.

“…what… what if…”

“No, sweetheart.”

“But—”

“No, princess. I know what you’re going to say, but no. And yes, I _know_ I said it was possible to happen, but it started in Niflheim. There’s never been a case in Lucis where a human turned into a daemon.”

“But what if it _did_ happen and no one noticed?!”

“Sweetheart… people would know if someone just… disappeared. Especially a mother and her child.”

“Well… y-yeah, but…”

“Don’t think on it too hard, princess,” Prompto murmurs as he moves her bangs aside and presses a kiss to her forehead. “It’s over with… and even if that was the case… it doesn’t change anything. She was a daemon when we found her. Whether she was a human before that… it no longer matters.”

“…I… I guess so…”

Prompto allows a small smile, before he catches sight of the clock and he blinks. “Oh hey, it’s already six in the morning.”

“Huh…?” Regina blinks as well as she looks over. “…oh yeah…”

He chuckles at the quip, before he stands up. “Well, we’re up anyway… how ‘bout we go eat something and then go for a jog, huh?”

“Huh…? Oh! Sure!” Regina smiles as she jumps to her feet, following him into the kitchen to work on breakfast.

As they work, though, Prompto can tell that Regina is still thinking about the last part of the conversation so he does his best to distract her from it.

It won’t do to think on things like that; it’s just not important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, remember how I said in "Diamond Dust" how this could potentially branch off into another series?  
> Can anyone guess what kind of series I meant and does anyone want to see that?


	2. Genetrix 1.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Regina thinks back on the conversation she’s had that morning with her Dad as she pulls out an item they’d found in Fociaugh Hollow.

Regina rarely ever has trouble falling asleep; this is a well-known fact these days. Many joke that she can actually fall asleep anywhere, and that she could likely fall asleep while standing up. She highly doubts the latter, but whatever.

Tonight, however, she finds herself staying awake well past her usual bedtime, but not because she wants to. She’s just got far too much on her mind to even think of going to sleep.

Her Dad’s words from that morning continue to run through her head, and while he’d effectively shot her theory out the window, Regina just isn’t sure if she can believe that her theory is impossible… or that it’s not important.

She groans in annoyance as she sits up and goes to her nightstand. She opens the drawer and pulls out the object she kept there for safekeeping until she could figure out whom it belonged to. Once she had it in her hand, she plopped down on the bed again and regarded it.

It looks like a locket from afar – which, by the way, it actually _is_ – but the style of the locket is far different from anything she’s ever seen on anyone in Lucis. Most lockets she’s seen on people were either plated gold or pale silver, but they never seemed “metallic”. This one, however, was definitely not made of either gold or silver, because it’d been rusted shut when Domi had found it purely by chance, and rust doesn’t form on either gold or silver. Also, she knew from watching through shop windows that most lockets had some sort of “lovey-dovey” design… but this one seemed far more… well, “technical”, she supposes is a good word for it, with all its gears and almost jagged patterns along the front and back.

It had taken them a bit initially to get it to open up for them, but now it flips open effortlessly.

Inside the locket, behind cracked glass, is a picture of a family of three; a father, mother, and a baby, securely swaddled up and held securely by the mother. The crack goes right over the father’s face, obscuring all but a smile that doesn’t strike her as completely genuine… maybe a bit, but not a lot. The mother appears to be almost ecstatic, though, with her smile so bright Regina’s convinced she could’ve lit up a dark room with just her smile…

But the mother is the one who drew Regina’s attention to the object in the first place…

Regina’s not sure how old the woman is here; if she has to guess, somewhere between 20 and 30, but certainly no older than that. Her blonde hair is worn in a style she doesn’t recognize; most of it hangs loose but she wears some of it in braids from her temples to the back and two small braids frame her face, highlighting the sparkling blue eyes that are surrounded by like two dozen of freckles dotting a naturally (or so she believes) pale skin.

Silently, she then pulls out her wallet, flips it open and takes out the picture she’d taken out from the album earlier that day, without her Dad knowing – she makes a mental note to put it back in the morning. The picture is of her Dad, Ignis, Gladio, Iris… and herself, as a baby ( _fuck_ she was  tiny!). The first “family photo” ever taken since her Dad admitted to everyone that he was planning to raise Regina as his daughter, from what Iggy’s told her.

After a brief moment of hesitation, she lifts both the photo and the locket, holding them side by side… or more specifically; holds the locket next to the image of her Dad.

He’s holding her exactly like the woman in the picture is holding her own baby, and while that’s not _that_ big a deal (there’s only so many ways you can hold a baby without causing irreparable harm to the fragile neck), it only makes it easier to see the rest of the similarities.

The blonde hair is the same color (as in _exactly_ the same), the eyes are the same shade and hell, even the same _shape_ , and the freckles along the pale skin, primarily the cheeks, are another damning similarity. The only thing that’s off is the shape of the face, except for the round cheekbones that are _definitely_ the same.

Regina doesn’t believe in coincidence… not really. Sometimes it happens, sure, but this? This is _not_ a coincidence. Her Dad will likely say otherwise, but no, Regina is not convinced that this is a coincidence.

What worries her, though… is the broken chain the locket hangs from. All the chain’s links had been stretched out, as if to accommodate for something, before one of the links had caved in to the pressure and snapped. And that shouldn’t have happened under _any_ circumstances. Well… _normal_ circumstances.

If you’d pulled the locket off by force, only one link should’ve snapped and the others should’ve been fine. But here, _all_ chain links were stretched out to far beyond what their maximum should’ve been…

Even if everyone else tells her she’s looking too much into this, she’s 100% sure her theory is correct…

She’s sure that she knows _exactly_ who this woman is… and what happened to her…

…She just needs the proof to back up her claim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand that's the setup to start the new series... Get ready for that one.


End file.
